Monday, March 24, 2014

Lucy Hounsom on the Importance of Fantasy

The camaraderie we feel with well-crafted characters – of shared trials while questing – is one of the reasons I started reading fantasy. I was an unsociable, diffident teenager and a bit of a loner frightened to make friends. The physical and psychological transition from childhood to adulthood is the hardest we face as individuals, and many of us find ourselves reaching out to others in the same situation. I found myself reaching out to characters that lived in entirely different worlds. That was part of their gift. Unable then to adjust to an adult world full of novelties, I felt that I could only grow with – and learn from – those who fought their battles and faced their demons in the realm of myth.

This is one of the reasons I write (and read, and edit) fantasy as well, and it's the reason I decided at a very young age to dedicate a life in which I believed I could've done just about anything to telling stories. I was not an unsociable and diffident teenager, but I still found the transition from childhood to adulthood incredibly difficult. I still needed stories. I too found what I was after in fantasy, and I have always wanted to give something back---or pay something forward, put more accurately---to it.

And I will be looking forward anxiously to Lucy's first book in 2015, since it seems we're cut very much from the same kind of cloth.